Rubber duck debugging is one of those things that sounds completely ridiculous and is actually really helpful. To summarize the wikipedia page quickly, rubber duck debugging is when you figure out what’s wrong with your code by explaining it very carefully to an inanimate object.

You’re probably wondering why you would bother explaining your code to an object like a rubber duck or a teddy bear if you work as part of a team and you could just ask one of the other devs for help. Sometimes you should go directly to another developer. If there’s a serious bug in production that affects a lot of users, worrying about interrupting someone would be silly, it’s much more important to get production working again than to let Hypothetical Amy finish off her refactoring task before you bother her.

In other situations, it’s more important to give it a try yourself before interrupting anyone. The reason interruptions are such a big deal is that context switching is expensive and it’s even worse when switching to a programming task because of the number of details programmers have to “reload” into their working memory before they can get back into their work. Numbers on exactly how long it takes to get back up to speed after you’ve been interrupted vary, this Fast Company article says it takes a little over 23 minutes to get back on task but this New York Times article says it’s more like 25 minutes. If you ask someone to help you for just five minutes, it’s really not just five minutes, it’s also the time it takes for them to get back into what they were doing. That’s why programmers tend to get so cranky when you interrupt them :)

One way you can try to solve your own problem without interrupting anyone is rubber duck debugging. Having to explain all of the context around your problem, like what you’re trying to accomplish, what your code is supposed to do to get to that end result, what seems to be going wrong, where you think the problem is, what you’ve already tried, etc is one of the most useful parts of asking another person for help, and often the only part you need to solve your problem. Something about the process of explaining a problem to someone else helps you see parts that you missed before, whether it’s a log file you didn’t check or a logic error you didn’t catch. That explaining process doesn’t actually require a person to explain things to, it can work just as well if you explain it to the rubber duck, or the teddy bear, or a voice recording app on your phone or whatever works for you.

Personally, I like to write an email to the person I would ask for help if I really couldn’t figure it out myself. Putting a name at the top seems to help me get into the mindset of thinking about what that person would ask me about the problem and what they would likely suggest I try next. Most of the time I figure it out before I finish the email, but when I don’t, hey, I already have a nice tidy explanation of the problem that I can send to the person I would’ve asked for help anyway :)

If you’re stuck and don’t have anyone around to ask or just want to try everything you can before you ask for help, give rubber duck debugging a try. The worst case scenario is you end up with a good description of your problem that you could send to a friend of post in a forum.

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[…] the hack part :) The becoming a better programmer part is that stating a question really clearly (yay rubber ducks!) and listing everything you’ve tried already may trigger that flash of insight about what you […]